To the torture charges, the Harper government's response is to deny, smear and bully
Robert Peffers
smear and bully
By James Laxer | November 21, 2009
Respected Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin, a highly credible source,
told a House of Commons committee on Wednesday that all of the
captives Canadian soldiers transferred to local authorities in
2006-2007 likely ended up being tortured. Colvin, who served in
Afghanistan for 17 months, began sending warnings that this was
happening in May 2006. He transmitted reports to senior members of the
Canadian military including Lieutenant-General Michel Gauthier, who
was then the commander of Canadian Expeditionary Force Command, which
oversees foreign deployments. Colvin told the committee that he
believes that Gauthier would have relayed these highly disturbing
warnings to General Rick Hillier, who was then the country's top
soldier. Others who were alerted to Colvin's reports included: David
Mulroney, former deputy minister of the Afghanistan Task Force in the
Privy Council Office; and Margaret Bloodworth, Prime Minister Stephen
Harper's national security advisor.
This matter went right to the top. It doesn't pass the laugh test that
Hillier and Harper were not informed about these warnings.
Colvin told the committee that the government's response to the
warnings was to try to shut him down: "At first, we were mostly
ignored. However, by April 2007, we were receiving written messages
from the senior Canadian government co-ordinator for Afghanistan to
the effect that I should be quiet and do what I was told, and also
phone messages from a DFAIT assistant deputy minister suggesting that,
in future, we should not put things on paper, but instead use the
telephone."
Having failed to block Colvin from testifying, the Conservative
machine has gone into overdrive to blacken his name, to smear his
reputation.
Rejecting opposition demands for an inquiry into Colvin's allegations,
Defence Minister Peter MacKay told the House that "there are
incredible holes in the story that have to be examined."
In any self-respecting democracy, an inquiry would be the automatic
response to charges of this seriousness. Remember, Colvin remains a
trusted employee of the government who works on intelligence files at
the Canadian Embassy in Washington.
But the Conservatives are renowned for smearing critics. A couple of
years ago, they derided the leader of the NDP as "Taliban Jack" for
his suggestion that NATO should negotiate with elements of the
Taliban. That is now the policy not only of Canada in Afghanistan, but
of the Karzai government in Kabul.
If MacKay's response is to dismiss the charges and shut the door to
hearing anything further about them, Rick Hillier depicted the fuss
about the allegations as mere "howling at the moon."
"I don't remember reading a single one of those cables [from Mr.
Colvin] ... He doesn't stick out in my mind," Hillier said. Then he
made the incredible statement that "Even in our own prisons [in
Canada] somebody can get beaten up. We know that."
The nation's former top soldier apparently doesn't know the difference
between life in a Canadian prison and the gruesome and systematic
torture of detainees, many of whom were innocent bystanders when
picked up by Canadian soldiers, according to Colvin.
Former Conservative Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor rushed to protect
the higher-ups in the Harper government when he said: "Reports like
this [Colvin's] may have occurred and gone through the system and
people at lower levels may have decided there's no credibility to
different reports." The mention of Gordon O'Connor brings to mind the
fact that this is not the first time we have heard credible evidence
of Canadians handing over prisoners to be tortured in Afghanistan.
In the winter of 2007, serious allegations were made that the Canadian
forces in Afghanistan had been handing over captured insurgents to the
Afghan authorities only to have them tortured. In a series of articles
that shone the spotlight on the issue, the Globe and Mail created a
political firestorm for the Harper government.
From the early days of Canada's military mission in Afghanistan, the
military had advised the government that the task of building and
running Canadian detention facilities to house captured insurgents was
prohibitively expensive and beyond the military's existing expertise.
The practice, therefore, was to turn prisoners over to the Americans
or to the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai.
In 2005, Bill Graham, Canada's Liberal Minister of National Defence,
was concerned with the detainee issue and badly wanted an agreement
with the Afghan authorities. The minister sought a transfer
arrangement that would specify that detainees turned over by Canada
would enjoy Geneva Convention rights. The deal would have to include
an understanding that both Canada and Afghanistan would maintain
written files on all prisoners, and that the prisoners could be
visited by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and by
the Karzai government's Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.
As it turned out, the deal with the Afghans was only reached in
December 2005 by Chief of Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier, who
signed the understanding with Afghanistan's Defence Minister Abdul
Rahim Wardak in Kabul. While the deal finalized by the General
included the stipulations that Graham had wanted, it was to prove
disastrously inadequate. Unlike agreements signed by other NATO
countries with the Afghans including the Netherlands and the United
Kingdom, Canada's agreement contained no stipulation that Canada could
follow-up on transferred detainees to ensure that they were not being
tortured in Afghan prisons. By the time the deal was signed, the
federal election that would bring Stephen Harper's Conservatives to
office was underway, and it was the Harper government that would be
roiled by the fallout in the early months of 2007.
Evidence mounted that prisoners in Afghan hands were being mistreated.
In their book, The Unexpected War, Janice Gross Stein and Eugene Lang
reported that the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, Amnesty
International, and Canadian Louise Arbour, the UN Commissioner for
Human Rights "had concluded that abuse, torture, and extrajudicial
killing were routinely inflicted on people in Afghan custody."
Pointing the finger directly at the Canadian government was University
of Ottawa Law Professor Amir Attaran. Using the federal Access to
Information Act, Professor Attaran obtained documents from which he
concluded that Afghan detainees appear to have been beaten while
detained and interrogated by Canadian soldiers. The professor used
this information to request an investigation into the treatment of the
detainees by the Military Police Complaints Commission, a civilian
body established to investigate complaints against the Canadian
military. In light of these allegations, in February 2007, the
Canadian military launched investigations into the matter of detainee
abuse by Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.
The allegations brought to light by Professor Attaran stemmed from an
incident in April 2006 when Canadian soldiers captured three Afghans.
The heavily redacted record Professor Attaran obtained through Access
to Information referred to injuries sustained by the prisoners while
they were under Canadian custody. Subsequently, the three men were
handed over to the Afghans. In the winter of 2007 when officers from
the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service set out to talk to
the men about the allegations that they had been injured while in
Canadian custody, the men could not be found.
The Globe and Mail continued to unearth information that heightened
the pressure on the Harper government. A Globe reporter managed to
find and interview thirty former detainees who said they had been
transferred from Canadian to Afghan jurisdiction and then had been
tortured while in Afghan hands. While these allegations could not be
independently verified, a powerful case was being made that Canada had
turned over prisoners with little thought for their fate and that the
government had tried to cover up its own shoddy performance.
Making matters much worse for Ottawa was the performance of Defence
Minister Gordon O'Connor in the House of Commons. On the matter of the
treatment of detainees handed over to the Afghans, the minister told
MPs that the International Committee of the Red Cross was monitoring
the condition of these detainees. In May 2006, O'Connor declared in
the Commons that "the Red Cross or the Red Crescent is responsible to
supervise their treatment once the prisoners are in the hands of the
Afghan authorities. If there is something wrong with their treatment,
the Red Cross or Red Crescent would inform us and we would take
action."
In early March 2007, however, the rug was pulled out from under that
position when Simon Schorno, a spokesperson for the ICRC, told the
Globe and Mail that "we were informed of the agreement, but we are not
a party to it and we are not monitoring the implementation of it." On
March 19, 2007, O'Connor apologized to the House of Commons for the
misleading statements he had made on the issue. "I fully and without
reservation apologize to the House for providing inaccurate
information for members," he said, adding that "the International Red
Cross Committee is under no obligation to share information with
Canada on the treatment of detainees transferred by Canada to Afghan
authorities."
To staunch the public-relations and political calamity that had
befallen them, the Harper government rushed to conclude a new
agreement with the Karzai government on May 3, 2007. On paper at
least, the new agreement contained additional protections for
transferred detainees. Under its terms, representatives of Canada were
to be accorded unfettered access to the prisoners including the right
to hold private interviews with them.
That seemed to be the end of the matter, but not quite. As reported by
Stein and Lang in their book, Ahmad Fahim Hakim, the deputy chair of
the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission told them that the
commission could not guarantee that prisoners were not being tortured
in Afghan detention centres. The commission, he said, had too few
monitors, and could take up to twenty days after being notified of a
problem to pay a first visit to a detainee.
Considering the unhappy history of the torture question in
Afghanistan, you would think that Colvin's allegations would be
received respectfully by the government and then aired before an
inquiry.
But that is not how this government operates.
Deny, smear, bully. Those are the watchwords of a government that
cares nothing about the truth.
I have been watching parliamentary debates for over forty years---both
from the galleries and on television.
No government over that span of time has come remotely close to this
one in its disregard for the institution. Ministers in the Harper
government don't answer the questions they are asked in the House.
Instead, they deny, smear and bully.
James Laxer is regularly asked to comment on current national and
global issues by the Canadian media and frequently writes columns in
major newspapers and periodicals.